Sands Of Time - Early Demos & Rarities is a history lesson for those who were unfamiliar with Mithras in past times, and a reminiscent look back over the demos and old recordings for Leon and Rayner with a booklet of running commentary complete with comments from a few past members.

The CD contains four demo/MCD's of the band's past, re-mastered, running in reverse order from when they were first released. The first two tracks are also re-recordings from 2003 of two of the earliest Mithras tracks, from back when the band went under the name of Imperator.

It is fair to say that Sands Of Time is only for fans of the band to take an interesting look back at the different steps through the Mithras history from how the drums sound from demo to demo, to the Bequeath Thy Visions demo and the changing and development of the sound from an ordinary death metal band to the beginnings of something slightly more "spacey" or "atmospheric" and original that the band have become known for today.

Leon has done a good job re-mastering all the songs to this standard here from their original recordings. The first two songs "Gods Among Men" and "Ancient Prophecy" especially sound great, but the songs themselves are a million miles away from the standard of the music on all three of the band's full length albums. These demos are interesting to listen to, but provide nothing in the way of death metal carnage and obligatory enjoyment therefrom that the albums themselves offer.

You never know if releasing re-worked sub-par demos into the public eye away from the skeletons and dust of the band's archives is a good idea. Even if it is interesting to mark the development and progress of the band from their beginnings, these are still songs and versions of songs that either never made it to an album or were worked on with the result being a better, tighter, more intense version for their place on album.

Sands Of Time should be for interest purposes only, but even so, it makes you want to reach for Worlds Beyond The Veil one more time - and anything that does that can't be a bad thing.